Geeks are always keen to approach organizing their lives as an engineering problem. Hence the obsession with David Allen’s Getting Things Done is a time-management methodology and the steady flow of ideas that come out of lifehacker.com

The OHIO principle for E-Mail: Only Handle It Once.
Don’t keep re-reading waiting until you’re ready for a response, choose to handle then or not respond at all (with an exception for the “can’t read this here” problem with mobile devices – but mark it as unread). I’m not a dogmatic process-to-zero inbox person, but I do work sequentially. I’ll only mark as read when the messages is “no longer my responsibility” and some times that means responding asking for clarity to buy a little time and share the responsibility of transmitting a clear message.

Tasks are important and ubiquitous.
I think I’m one of the few people who values Microsoft Outlook’s Tasks feature, and there’s all kinds of other task Apps. The trick for me is having those task synced across all my devices, so that when I have the moment of inspiration or recollection I record it easily. Tasks (or your calendar) is often an important next step after E-Mail comes in that allows you to “deal” with it at an initial level and mark the message as read. It’s also worth noting that a project is not a task.

About Matt Clare:

Matt Clare is a Canadian Technologist who is focused on building, deploying and refining the best tools possible for teachers and learners in higher education. Advocate of making all web content accessible by making the creation process easy.